First effective treatment in patients with advanced stage liver cancer identified with a biomarker

The Lancet Oncology

IDIBAPS participates in a new international project to advance in translational cancer research

Accelerator Award

Josep M. Llovet participates in the HUNTER (Hepatocellular Carcinoma Expediter Network) project, which is led by the University of Newcastle and granted with 5.6 million euros. Prof Llovet’s group at IDIBAPS has been granted with 1 million euros, this is the only Spanish group that participates in the Accelerator Award. In addition to the IDIBAPS group, 11 international research groups from the United Kingdom and 5 expert groups in hepatocellular carcinoma in Italy participate in this international project. This is the most important private funding ever granted in Europe for liver cancer research. Prof. Josep M Llovet - principal investigator - and Dr. Roser Pinyol - scientific project coordinator, collected the award at the event organized by the AECC in Madrid on September 24th 2018.

IDIBAPS researchers review advances in the treatment of liver cancer at Nature Reviews

Prof Josep M Llovet and Dr Robert Montal IDIBAPS researchers, have published an article in the Journal Nature Reviews of Clinical Oncology in which they review the important advances that have taken place in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The article analyzes the different molecular targets, new therapies and future perspectives in the treatment of this cancer, which accounts for 90% of primary liver tumors.

On 13 March, IDIBAPS hosted the annual meeting of the European HEP-CAR consortium. The aim of the project is to identify the molecular mechanisms involved in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and their role in the different co-morbidities that induce the onset of this type of cancer: the infection by hepatitis B and C viruses, alcohol intake or obesity.

The ‘Handbook of Translational Medicine’ is available now. Edited by Prof Josep M Llovet in collaboration with other teachers from the official Master in Translational Medicine (University of Barcelona).

Prof Llovet has been elected Vice-Chair of the AASLD Hepatobiliary Neoplasia SIG.

Prof Llovet has been elected Vice-Chair of the AASLD Hepatobiliary Neoplasia SIG. His 2 year term will begin on January 1st, 2017 until December 31st, 2018 and then he will move into the Chair role for 2 years beginning January 1st, 2019 until December 31st, 2020.

IDIBAPS researchers have identified the first epi-driver in liver cancer, a type of epigenetic alteration in the IGF2 gene that causes tumors to grow.

In the study, published in the Gastroenterology journal, they have found that this alteration occurs in 15% of tumors and that a monoclonal antibody can effectively block it and slow tumor progression in animal models. Dr. Josep M. Llovet, ICREA Professor, Head of the Translational research in hepatic oncology IDIBAPS group and Director of the Mount Sinai Liver Cancer Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York), has coordinated this study. The first authors of the article are Iris Martínez-Quetglas and Roser Pinyol, researchers at the same team.

Thomson Reuters lists the 3000 most important names of 21 fields in science and social sciences. There have been evaluated articles published in indexed journals in these fields between 2003 and 2013 and there have only been considered those that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year indexed in the Web of Science, the so called Highly Cited Papers. Thus, the fact of belonging to this classification means that the work of these researchers is considered particularly important among his colleagues.

IDIBAPS researchers have participated in a pioneering study in hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common liver cancer, in which all the genetic alterations that occur in this type of tumor have been characterized. In an article published in the journal Nature Genetics scientists provide a complete overview of the disease and these genetic alterations associated with the etiology and clinical characteristics, the proposed treatments for patients approved for other cancers, which could be applied in each case. Dr. Josep Maria Llovet, ICREA professor at the IDIBAPS Hepatic Oncology Group and director of the Liver Cancer Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York), and Dr. Roser Pinyol, researcher at the same group, have participated in this article led by Dr. Jessica Zucman-Rossi, from the INSERM-Paris.